


Look The Part

by AnonymousPumpkin



Series: Homestuck Prompt Fills [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: And also fashion advice, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, It can be shippy if you want to read it that way, Mentions of past prostitution, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6961036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPumpkin/pseuds/AnonymousPumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A not-so-short not-so-drabble written for a prompt, in which Karkat Vantas, unwilling leader of the free world of trolls, gets some well-meaning fashion advice from someone who knows exactly what she's talking about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look The Part

**Author's Note:**

> 69\. Noble
> 
> This prompt got away from me. This fic started out as Karkat Has A Crush On Redglare and now look at it. It's got morals. And lessons. And a plot??? I feel like I lost steam in a couple of places, but, again...these prompts are pretty much just about me WRITING, not necessarily writing WELL. The ending is really rushed, because I literally realized as I was about to post that it didn't HAVE an ending and I had to wrap it up real quick.

__It’s really hard to find sleep on the run. In all the movies and books, the protagonist always managed to find sleep wherever they could, napping in between scenes even if they had to sleep on coals and nails. I’m a bit too high-strung to fall into that kind of rhythm. It doesn’t help that there’s very little sopor to go around (so little, in fact, that we don’t even use it), so we _all_ go without. Some people got used to the daymares quickly, and manage to either keep their terror to themselves or just go completely without. Most people did not. I am in the lucky second group. Even when I’m awake, I’m tense and paranoid, painfully aware of how vulnerable we all are like this. Every faint rumble is the heavy footfall of our pursuer. Every drop of water is a high snicker. Every shadow holds a hunter lying in wait, ready to leap out when I’m at my weakest.

It’s been nearly a sweep now since I was quite dramatically snatched from the jaws (claws?) of death and whisked away underground, literally right under the nose of Her Imperious Condescension herself. It was a glorious moment, or so I’ve been told, and the triumph all the downtrodden trolls felt upon seeing my defection was possibly matched only by the fury felt by our beloved Empress. I’d had no time at all to catch my breath, collect my thoughts, or even slow the bleeding before I was running with the best of her Imperial Headhunterrorizers hot on my tail.

We’d been crouching and cowering in every hole we can find. As we’ve gone, we’d gathered a following of desperate and angry trolls, mostly warm, and now every move we make it made with the stipulation that we will be moving what is essentially a small noncombatant army. At the moment we’re in some kind of underground catacomb system underneath an abandoned (bombed, most likely) city, and after some exploration, we’ve decided it’s either mother grub caverns or old sewage systems. For our sakes, I hope it’s sewage systems.

This kind of thought is not conducive to sleep. No matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut, I can still see the maps spread out in front of me as I desperately try to plot our next course of action (because putting a terrified fuckup of a troll barely out of adolescence in charge of your hastily-planned revolution is a _great_ idea), and the _spreadsheets_ and _charts_ made by well-intentioned “advisors” telling me all the reasons the next course of action would definitely result in our permanent and painful end. And again, there’s the paranoia that every crack in the wall is hiding an enemy.

Yeah, I’m not getting to fucking sleep.

“Fuck…”

I untangle myself from the twisted mess of limbs that is my friends (and some random strangers I couldn’t say no to). Other people aren’t nearly as good as sopor slime when it comes to chasing off daymares, but we’ve found that cuddling works almost as well.

Sollux whimpers as I pull myself out of his grasp, hand trailing up after me. I guide it down to Tavros’s shoulder, and he takes the hint, latching onto him so fast it’s hard to believe he’s still asleep. His eyes are still puffy and yellow from crying, his lips a bloody mess and his fingertips no better. My bloodpusher squeezes. I wish I knew what to say to him. He is little more than a husk these days, walking, eating, bathing only when he’s told to, and then only when you force him. Every day he walks slower, eats less, bathes. It’s getting harder and harder to fight the urge to take it all on myself, but he wouldn’t appreciate me bulldozing my way into his diamond out of guilt.

I feel like I owe him that much, though. This is my fault, after all, isn’t it? If I hadn’t been so stupid, so foolhardy, so idealistic, none of this would’ve happened. If I hadn’t decided that it was my personal responsibility to give the biggest, gaudiest, most pants-shittingly belligerent “Fuck You” to the Empire, a whole lot of people would still be alive right now, none the wiser as to their potential fate at my hands. A whole lot of people including but not limited to Aradia Megido.

Sollux buries his face in Tavros’s back and my eyes go to _his_ face. He’s one of those lucky fuckers who’s made the no-sopor transition like a fucking champ, and that little scrunch of his nose is the only indication that he isn’t having peaceful happy dreams of sunshine and flowers and rainbows. My digestion sac plummets. He’s either grimacing from nightmares or grimacing from pain. He hasn’t told me himself, but I know that he hurts. If I hadn’t done… _all that shit_ I did, he’d still be happy and not running for his life and also able to walk which, as I understood it, was a thing he’d kind of liked doing. And his lusus would still be alive. And he’d still have a hive. And he’d still have a job. And a life.

Of course from there, my eyes travel past him to where Aradia, by all logic, should be lying too, and when I see some stranger instead, huddling up to Tavros for warmth, my entire respiratory and digestive systems collectively take a poll and decide to its in their best interest get the fuck of dodge, “dodge” being my body.

I force myself to turn away before I lose myself to the downward spiral of self-deprecation. Aradia’s not here, but I know what she’d say if she was, if only because she used to say it all the time when we all shared a hive and I was the grubloaf-winner of our happy band of dysfunctional misfits.

_"Moping never did anyone any good, Karkat! I’m not saying don’t be sad, but there’s a time and a place, and it’s not here and it’s not now!”_

The caverns are very quiet and dark and still. Some primal part of me instinctually knows that it’s daylight outside, and is demanding what the fuck I think I’m doing walking up and about at this ungodly hour. I step over piles of sleeping (and pretending-to-be-sleeping) trolls and make my way to what has been unofficially declared as the nutritionblock of our camp. There aren’t really “blocks,” considering, you know…we’re probably in the sewers, but we’ve learned to take what we can get and aggressively play pretend.

The makeshift nutritionblock is just a fucking cave with food in it. Crates are stacked up two by two along the walls, arranged so that we can get them up and on the lusii’s back at a moment’s notice. There are lamps at the two entrances, which do little more than make menacing shadows on the walls.

There aren’t many people willing to try the whole “awake and mobile” thing right now. I pass a couple of terrified kids who watch me go past with dull eyes that brighten when they see me. When I meet their gaze, one of them manages a smile and lifts her hands to form that damned symbol. I return it as best I can in my sleep-deprived state, and it’s mostly just so she’ll stop looking at me like I’m personally going to lift her out of the dredges of her misery.

As if I’m not the one that fucking _caused_ it.

Fuck.

I rummage through our food stores, even though I have absolutely no intention of eating anything, what with the whole mutinying organs and all that. There are a couple of guards who stand around and make sure no one takes more than what’s been rationed, but they always make an exception for me, probably because they know I never actually take anything. I know most of them by name now, and exchange tired greetings as I card through stale grubloaf and hard grubbars. I’m actually tempted by a bag of critter crunches, but I think of those girls, bones showing in places that should never show bone, and I put it down.

I turn to leave, and see her. She’s sitting in the very back of the room on a crate, sipping what looks like a cup of herb juice (tea, I remind myself without thinking; she’s high enough that she would call it tea). I think she’s supposed to be a guard too. I don’t remember assigning her to be on guard duty (I don’t actually remember assigning her to be _anything_ ), but I also don’t remember if I ate breakfast last night.

For a second, I just stare at her. She’s half in shadow, and all I can really see is her silhouette and the red glare of her shades as they reflect the lamps. She cuts an imposing figure.

Against my better judgement, I slip to the back. She raises her head as I approach, and I see her mouth twitch as if to smile.

“Hey, Pyrope.”

If past-me circa exactly one sweep ago had seen current-me circa three seconds ago talk to Redglare with such nonchalance, he would have shit himself a moobeast. I sit down on a crate across from her.

“Good afternoon.” Her mouth barely moves when she talks, and though I wait for it to extend into its familiar grin, it remains in a grim, hard line. She takes a sip of her tea.

“Is it afternoon? Coulda fooled me.” I rub at my eye, aware only after the fact how wigglerish that is. I look around. No one but her saw, and she didn’t seem to care.

We sit in complete silence, which is actually fine with me. I’m not sure I could talk right now without it devolving into some kind of horrendously self-calignous tangent that would just embarrass everyone involved. I hadn’t thought about it when I sat down, but the way we’re arranged is really similar to…what I used to do. Not that I think she would ever do anything like that. Redglare doesn’t strike me as the type to need pacification, or to dole it out, and if she was, I sincerely doubt she’d stoop so low as to pay for it, even if it was for _me_.

It’s been a long time since we’ve been in a place where we can just sit and relax. I wouldn’t count this as _relaxing_ , exactly, but it’s a nice break from running for our lives and fighting for our freedom. I’ve _seen_ Redglare around, but it’s been so busy these past perigrees that in my mind, the last time I actually _saw_ her was in the Empress’s court, pale-faced and impeccably dressed as she watched me get sentenced to death. I know she wasn’t present for my execution, but that’s only because someone told me later in passing that we’d managed to pick up a rogue legislacerator who was on the run after voicing some anti-Imperialist views straight to the Empress’s face. I didn’t even know it was her until I managed to spot her in the crowd one day. She’d vanished before I could get close enough to say anything, and it’d been too hectic to try again.

“How have you been?” I ask, and realize immediately that that is probably the lamest thing I could’ve said.

She doesn’t immediately tease me for it, though. She takes a deep breath through her nose and lifts her chin. “I’ve been better,” she says frankly. “I knew what I was getting into, when I told the Empress to choke on her own bulge, but I admit I might not have thought very far ahead past that.” For a moment, she looks bemused, a bit chagrined, but then her face goes right back to the hard mask I’m used to. “I didn’t expect to survive that encounter, let alone find my way to the rebellion.”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” I can’t keep the sarcastic bite out of my voice, because in all honesty we are anything _but_. Rebellions _fight_. We run. We hide. We try to stay alive, and we barely manage to do that.

She’s glaring at me. Her face hasn’t changed at all, but I know she’s glaring at me. “Regardless of what you intended, _yes_.” She reaches up and tugs at her collar, fishing around as if looking for something. Before I can gather the mental fortitude to ask her what in the hell she’s doing, she pulls out a chain, on the end of which dangles…

“Oh.”

“Oh,” she echoes matter-of-factly, and nonchalantly bounces the charm with _my sign on it_ over her breast. “I’ve been wearing this for half a sweep now. I had it made in secret after you freed those prisoners from the Orphaner.”

“Oh.”

"Oh,” she says again.

I want to tear my eyes away from it, but I can’t. For a moment, I could almost fool myself into thinking I’m back at the Capitol, sitting with another client. For a brief period of time, my symbol was all the rage, embroidered into every lapel and coattail, emblazoned proudly on every chest and pair of buttocks in the overenthusiastically poor taste that can only be found on Alternia. The only people who got charms, though, were my clients. My _regular_ clients. It had started out as a little act of rebellion, bestowing little tokens of my favor as if I had any right to do so. I had no doubt that my symbol was now illegal, and if anyone so much as sniffed the digits 6 and 9 in the same vicinity, heads would roll. To think that she had worn it for _half a sweep_ …

“I wasn’t the only one. I was one of very few, but hardly the only one.” She tucks it back into her collar, but my eyes hover over where it was for a few seconds more. She folds her legs and purses her lips and continues, “You have some supporters, last I heard, still in her court. Your influence grows every day, Vantas, whether you see it or not. Not just among the lowbloods.” She tilted her head to the side. A lock of hair fell into her face, landing on her cheek like a picture.

It’s been nearly two sweeps since I’ve sat across from her like this, and even longer since we’ve had an actual conversation. She doesn’t look that much different. That shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. In the midst of all this chaos, Redglare still looks… _noble_. I feel a little bit jealous. I know _I_ look like total crap: my hair’s started to grow out, I’m covered in bruises and cuts, I’ve got dark circles around my eyes, and my clothes are starting to hang off my frame. I look like the wigglers you see in those ads about lower-district poverty. Hideous and downtrodden and pitiful in that really disgusting way that makes you want to put the poor thing out of your misery.

Redglare has all that shit too, but she makes it look…really good. Her hair rests on her shoulders now, and though it’s lost the carefully controlled shape it had before, it has an air of carefully controlled chaos. It’s wild, but not _wild_ wild. Like in the movies. She carries her wounds like badges of honor, and doesn’t show so much as a wince of discomfort. Her clothes were always skin-tight, but now that she’s lost weight, they just look _normal_. And if she’s got bags under her eyes, her shades keep that shit on lockdown. All in all, she is every bit the paragon of trollkind I’ve always known her to be. She takes a careful sip of her tea like she’s sitting in the coddamn Empress’s waiting lounge instead of in an underground bunker hiding from a pack of subjugglators. She makes starving renegade look positively chic.

I wonder how she does it. It can’t just be her blood; we’ve got refugees way higher on the spectrum than her, and they look like total shit too.

“Vantas. You’re staring.”

I start. Though she hasn’t moved, I know her eyes have come up to meet mine, and I struggle to hold her gaze. You’d figure after all this time, her seeing me at my worst, me seeing at her at her slightly-less-than-best, and all the bonding we’ve done during that whole period of time where she was trying to keep me alive, I’d be a little less enamored with her, but alas. I’m pretty sure I still look at her like a grub looks at the sky for the first time. Kinda blinded, kinda awestruck, pretty dazzled.

I wonder where the line is between embarrassing wiggler crush and actual non-platonic sexual attraction, and I wonder if I’ve crossed it. She always used to laugh at me when she caught me staring like this, though she never verbally teased me. She doesn’t laugh at me, though. Her mouth doesn’t even twitch into that mocking half-smirk like it used to. She just looks…sad.

That part’s changed. Used to be I had to fight tooth and claw to get her to look at me with anything remotely resembling not-mocking, but now…now she looks at me like I’m a person. I know it’s not just because I’m older, and now just because of what the Empire did. It’s because she’s just like everyone else around here. She sees me as some kind of _symbol_. As some kind of _leader_. It’s fucking terrifying, mostly because I’m still extremely intimidated by her.

“Is there something on my face?” she asks, and I think I detect a hint of _teasing_ in her voice. Not like mocking adult-laughing-at-little-wiggler teasing. Like _friendly_ teasing.

“Oh, no, no, I mean…fuck, sorry, sorry, I mean…no, fuck,” I stutter, choking on every word and aborted apology. My face heats up, though it might be just light enough that she can’t tell too well.

Her mouth quirks and she lifts her teacup to her chin, but makes no move to sip. She’s laughing at me, I know it.

I keep chattering, because that’s the best way, obviously, to get myself out of this situation. “I was just…I mean…I was thinking that you still look hot, even though we’re pretty much living in a sewer right now.”

Oh. Oh wow. I’ve graduated from semi-amused quirk to full-on mirthful grinning in one horribly Troll Freudian slip. A thrill runs up my spine as she bares her teeth, which still strike me as being impossibly long and thin. My face couldn’t any redder if I bared it to the damn sun right now, and wow would you look at that ground, it sure looks like a good resting place for you to bury me after I gracelessly expire from the shame of _what the fuck just came out of my fucking mouth_.

“Why thank you,” she says softly, and takes another sip of tea. She purses her lips, but I can see her physically fighting to keep the grin from her face. “I do try. One never knows when one’s worst enemy will come around the corner and it wouldn’t do to be caught looking anything less than perfect.”

Well at least she’s trying to downplay my awkward confession as much as possible. Which isn’t surprising. She did it the first…what, _twenty_ times I accidentally told her how hot she was. It’s practically tradition now.

“I think that is a lesson you would benefit from as well.”

it takes a second for me to realize what the fuck she’s talking about, but once I do, I can’t help my eyebrows raising. “Wow, brutal, Pyrope. Why don’t you just _tell_ me I look like a pile of—”

There’s nothing in her face to indicate that she wants me to shut up; I just instinctively _know_. Maybe those perigrees of her grooming me to stay alive weren’t for naught after all. I may have failed spectacularly on the “stay on the good side of the Empire” endeavor, but at least I’ve learned Redglare’s facial cues, or lack thereof.

“That is not…what I was getting at.” She frowns, and puts her teacup down. She reaches for her cane, which is leaning against her knee, and strokes at its head absently. I think of her lusus and my pusher squeezes uncomfortably. I feel the urge to apologize, but I know she wouldn’t appreciate it. Another death that was definitely 100% absolutely and irrevocably my fault.

“What I meant was…”

Wait. Right. No time to mope. Important lecture coming from my sexy ex-mentor.

Her lips purse as I snap back to attention, and she continues, “What I _meant_ was…you’re very…important now. Whether you like it or not, whether you intended it or not, you became a symbol the second you stuck your sickle in that drone’s chest.”

I wince. Another reminder of a time when I fucked up beyond reckoning. Thousands dead, millions imprisoned, the entire Empire locked up and militarized like an apocalypse movie, all because some dumb mutant kid went and killed an Imperial drone in a globally televised event. Even then, I was too dumb to recognize obvious clues. I should have known I wasn’t supposed to win that fight. I should’ve known it wasn’t even supposed to be a fight in the first place.

“Do you remember what the Empire did to you? After you fought your way into the spotlight?”

''My eyes drop and I frown. That was a dark turn. “I mean, I’ve still got the scars, don’t I? Kinda hard to forget when it’s literally branded into me.”

“I…” Her face falls for a fraction of a second and her hand twitches, as if she’s going to reach for me. I’m extremely grateful that she doesn’t. “I meant before that.”

"Ah, before the torture and attempted culling? Would that be before I was made the Imperial court’s village two-wheeled device too? Or after?”

I can’t keep the anger from seeping into my voice now, even though none of it was really _her_ fault and I know that’s not at all what she is talking about. She looks at me for a long while.

“Perhaps that was not the best example.”

“Perhaps not.”

She lifts her cup again, taking a cautious sip, and looks away. I watch her for a few seconds before I start to feel guilty and look away as well, watching the shadows dance on the wall. I wonder if it’s almost night out yet, so I can walk around and yell and wave my arms without waking anyone up from their attempted slumber.

"Do you ever wonder why The Empress is so intimidating?” Pyrope drags me out of my thoughts again.

“Uh…” I struggle to get my thoughts back on track. I get the feeling she’s not asking about the obvious things, but those are the only things come to mind. “She’s fucking tall? And old? And powerful as fuck?”

Pyrope snorts. “Try again,” she singsongs, lips twisting in amusement. “I can think of twenty trolls off the top of my head older and taller—and some who are both—and they scare me about as much as a two-night-old wiggler.” She presses her lips to the edge of her teacup, and tilts her head towards me. “No, it’s not her size, or the power that we assume she has…it’s all about _presentation_. She _looks_ like a terrifyingly bloodthirsty and power-hungry tyrant who would kill you without batting an extended eyelash.”

I frown. Honestly, that wasn’t the description I’d come up when I’d found myself at her mercy, but it was as fitting as any other, I suppose. My first impression of her was a bit dimmed by the fact that she very much wanted me dead.

“So…you’re saying the Empress scares us all because she dresses nice?”

Pyrope’s nose wrinkles in distaste. “ _Nice_? I wouldn’t go that far. She dresses _tacky_ and _loud_ and she gets away with it because she _can_. It’s not just that she wears it, it’s that she _embodies_ it. She wears her role, inside and out.”

She can tell she’s lost me, because she sighs and puts her cup down. “Alright. Take me for example…” she says it like she’s talking to a wiggler, slow and careful. Her face flickers briefly before she admits, “I’m a _Neophyte_. A newbie. Or…I was.” Before I can scramble up the guilt associated with the past tense, she goes on, “I was at the bottom of the chain in my chosen profession…why do you think I was assigned to _you_?” She reaches up, and pushes her glasses a little further up her face. “But if I walked into a room, you’d never know it. Not unless you knew me. Most Neophytes are sloppy. Desperate. Flashy. That sets them apart. Makes them weaker. Makes them vulnerable.” She holds up one painted claw. “Rule one, Vantas. You never flash yourself about unless you’ve got the bulge to back it up. That’s why the Empress can get away with putting glitter on everything. She can and will kill you for daring to question it.”

“And you?” I speak up mostly because she’s looking at me like she expects me to say something, and I can’t think of a damned thing to say.”

She grins, wide and predatory. “And me? I can and will kill anyone who tells me that red is not my color.”

It takes a second for all the implications of that to set in (the ones she intended and the ones she didn’t). I flush uncomfortably and look away and fumble for something to say. “So…you’re suggesting I get an aggressive, loud makeover to match my aggressive, loud personality?”

She snorts. “Not quite. I’m suggesting you dress the part.” She leans in closer, and I catch a whiff of something. Is she seriously wearing perfume? We’re underground. In a cave. On the run.

“You are a revolutionary now, Karkat.” She stops my rambling thoughts again, and I start at the sound of my name. “You are a symbol to these people. You are a _leader_ to these people…to _us_. You are…” A strange look came over her face and she slid her glasses down, looking at me with her bright eyes. “Why…I dare say you’re _our_ Empress.”

I open my mouth to deliver a sharp retort…and find none forthcoming. She isn’t looking at me slyly or sagely or teasingly. She’s looking at me _seriously_. She _means_ what she’s saying.

“I am only suggesting that you dress the part.”

“I…uhh…”

She looks at me expectantly now, with that condescension I’m used to, waiting for my brain and my tongue to get together and make some fucking magic.

“I’ll…consider…that.”

She grins. “Why thank you, Mr. Esteemed Cherry Cola. I am honored.”

“Hey, now, don’t get all weird—”

She cuts me off by standing up. She towers over me (that’ll probably never change), but for once it doesn’t feel like she’s looking down on me.

“I’m going to sleep. Here.” She holds out her teacup. “You can finish this, if you like. Would hate to see it go to waste.”

“Uh…thanks…”

“Good afternoon, Karkat.”

“Uh…afternoon…Redgl—Pyro—” I trail off. “Good afternoon, Latula.”

She smiles. It’s an actual, honest-to-Empress smile, not a smirk or a grin or a grimace.

I get to enjoy it for exactly three seconds before she’s gone, turning and marching out of the room with the grace and precision I’m pretty sure only she is capable of.

A few hours later, I’m walking around the cave waving my arms around and yelling at people who are moving too slow, but my heart isn’t into it as much as it usually is. I know I’ve got a weird half-smile on my face, part smugness and part genuine joy.

When Latula handed me her teacup, I realized after taking a sip that it was filled with the same stale water the rest of us were drinking.

When Latula offered me her hand, I saw that the teal paint on her nails was chipping at the edges, and she had a bandage wrapped around her left thumb.

When Latula lowered her glasses, I saw that she had dark bags under her bloodshot eyes, same as me.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, though, have you seen Redglare? Lady looks like she is on point 24/7. You catch her nappin', she still looks fuckin rad.
> 
> This, much like my first prompt fill, technically was written with my Hunger Games AU in mind, which is why it's in literally the weirdest tense possible. However, you can imagine it as any Revolutionary!Karkat AU you want, so long as said AU contains Redglare alive and well and killin' it as always.


End file.
